[good to know someone out there remembers the original Chico Escuela]
Thanks all. A wealth of useful info and much appreciated. I guess I will wait out the HS season, or at least until HF August sessions get close to full, before Chico Jr. and I make any decisions. I also will do some research about the AZ All-Academic game, which looks interesting (although we are on the east coast).
Jr. is my youngest, so I have seen the college application meat grinder up close before, but not with a potential athlete. From what I saw, if you have the requisite grades and test scores at the Ivies and other top academic schools, then you go into a pool with about a 5-10% chance of admission. Once in that 5% pool, then if you have won a Nobel Prize (or at least a Westinghouse), or there is a building on campus named after a grandparent, then you can feel fairly confident. But D1 athletes are almost assured admission so long as they make the standards for the 5-10% pool, and D3 sometimes offers athletes a leg up. Chico Jr. is much more likely to throw a 90 mph fastball than win a Physics Nobel. Might as well aim high, but I know there are lots of great colleges out there outside D1 (I went to one).